CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — A Jordanian prince and the family of a slain 3-year-old boy and were among those who visited a New Zealand mosque Saturday when it reopened for the first time since a terrorist killed dozens of people there.
Hundreds of people stopped at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch to lay flowers or pray after police removed a cordon and those running the mosque decided to reopen.
Inside the mosque, there were few signs of the carnage from eight days earlier. Crews had replaced windows that worshipers smashed in a desperate attempt to escape when the attacker mowed them down during Friday prayers. Bullet holes were plastered over and painted. There wasn’t time to replace the carpet, which was pulled out and buried because it was soaked in blood.
Shagat Khan, the president of the Muslim Association of Canterbury, said they hadn’t planned to open the mosque so soon but when they saw the crowds gathering after the police cordon was removed they decided to allow people to enter in managed groups “so the mosque will be alive again.”
“Those who lost their families are of course quite emotional,” he said. “And those who were present here during the incident, of course the memories come back. The flashbacks.”
The gunman killed a total of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, in the nation’s worst terrorist attack. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with murder and is scheduled to make his next court appearance on April 5.
Abdullahi Ibrahim Diriye, the uncle of the youngest victim of the shooting, 3-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim, visited the mosque with the boy’s father. Diriye said he helped lift the boy’s coffin to a gravesite Friday as Mucaad’s mother wept.
“Always he was a happy boy, and he liked every...
